Retribution
by Compass West
Summary: Oneshot. Another great power arrives to the shores of Alagaesia. One that could tip the balance of the war. But not in the Varden's direction. Crossover with the Girdlegard series


**Retribution**

**Disclaimer: **I own neither the Inheritance Cycle nor the Girdlegard series. They belong to Christopher Paolini and Markus Heitz respectably. The Girdlegard books aren't really that well known. If you haven't read them, you should. If you read this, don't forget to review.

The Spine was one of Alagaesia's mysteries. Curving down the coastline in the shape of a dragon's tail, the large mountain range was the source for many a superstition or myth. It was an inhospitable place and entering was a dangerous business. It was said that Galbatorix had once attempted to conquer the Spine. A legion of the Empire's soldiers had marched in, never to be seen again.

The Spine seemed unconquerable, unquenchable.

But the seemingly impossible had happened. The Spine had been conquered. It was unknown for how long evil had festered inside the mountain range, hidden from all eyes, but it had emerged. And the Spine had been broken.

Galbatorix could see this with his own eyes. The Spine was dead. Where there had once been a vibrant green forest, barren land now stretched as far as the eye could see, littered with the skeletal corpses of dead trees. Upon this blighted land, nothing could live.

The perpetrator of this destruction stood across from him just scant metres away. If he so desired, the king could have stabbed him a dozen different ways a dozen different times. In fact, Galbatorix had. Several times. Not that it did anything.

The enormous man was clothed in malachite-coloured robes and he clasped a wooden staff topped with a large onyx crystal. From a distance, he could be mistaken for a mere human magician. Powerful yes, but nothing to challenge a Dragon Rider. How wrong that first impression was…

The man was no magician or wizard. He referred to himself as a 'magus', whatever that was. Whatever that was, it was something outside of Galbatorix's knowledge. The closest thing he could compare him to was a Shade, a sorceror colonised by a malevolent spirit.

But this man lacked the red hair and eyes that marked such a being, his eyes being the colour of tarnished silver. Besides, all of the Shades he had seen were physically fit. This man was fat beyond all relief, his massive girth wobbling like jelly every time he moved.

With a gurgle and a small cough, he coughed up another stream of blood out between his flabby lips. He was covered in blood. He sweated it out of his very pores. Whenever he moved, he left a glistening snails trail of blood behind him.

In other words, he was disgusting and repellent in ways the king had rarely seen. But he was powerful in ways alien to Galbatorix and vice versa. Both of them had something to gain by an alliance.

"Who are you?"

"I am Nod'onn the Doublefold," the being rasped in a voice sounding as if two people, one male and other female, were speaking at once.

"Why are you here?"

"I am here to protect you."

The kind waved a hand at the surrounding devastation. He had lost several thousand of his soldiers against this _thing _before he had come himself to investigate.

"I would hardly call this protecting," he said dryly. To tell the truth, he hardly cared about the lost soldiers. There were plenty more where they had come from.

"They refused to listen. There is a danger approaching from beyond the borders of this land. I know it. Only the embrace of the Perished Land can protect you from it."

Galbatorix privately disagreed. He had seen the 'embrace' of the Perished Land firsthand. Death was a threshold that no magic could cross. Save that of Nod'onn it seemed. Soldiers who had died fighting him had risen moments later as animated corpses to butcher their former friends and comrades. They could only be killed by decapitation, which rendered a great majority of death spells useless against them.

But corpses were not the only things in the armies of the Perished Land. Many boats had landed on Alagaesia's shores carrying a multitude of inhuman beasts. The majority of them were large green humanoids alike to Urgals in many respects.

But the armies were unnecessary. The vast majority of the slaughter here had taken place at the hands of the bloated sorceror in front of him. You could see the scars in the mountains where Nod'onn had gouged out massive boulders to shoot out with massive force in a stone rain that wiped out thousands of men in direct violation of what Galbatorix had thought to be one of the immutable laws of magic. That one could only apply as much force as they could physically. Either Nod'onn had the physical strength of a giant or his magic was as foreign as the rest of him.

Either way, Galbatorix wanted it. He could scarcely imagine the power he would be able to access if it he learnt it, if he was to use it in combination with his own system of magic. He would be unstoppable. No doubt, Nod'onn was thinking the same thing.

He cleared his throat. "I have a deal for you."

Nod'onn inclined his corpulent head.

"Remove this blight from my land and-"

"No! There is a danger coming. If you were not only such a fool you would see it! Only the power of the Perished Land can aid your people."

The king gritted his teeth. He was not used to being called names. He would have killed anyone else who had said it. As it were, he had already tried to kill Nod'onn. The enormous man's wards were strong and even when they failed, it turned out that he was quite impervious to any harm Galbatorix could inflict, be it physical or magical. He shrugged off disembowelments and decapitations and the death words that relied on crushing small parts of his vital organs had been absorbed without any noticeable effect.

Galbatorix was in fact unsure of just how much Nod'onn's anatomy was still human. The man's flesh moved like it was liquid and it bulged from within, as if some potent force was straining for release.

And the abhorrent man had fought back with lightning bolts and vast magical attacks that, while crude, had enormous power backing them. Galbatorix's wards had been pelted with numerous attacks from fireballs to a subtle attack that if he hadn't been able to adjust his wards in time would have reduced him and his dragon to a statue. Much of his magic was unfamiliar to him, meaning that his wards were not designed for such attacks. He had been forced to create new ones on the fly to stop himself from being consumed from within by a plague of malignant magical tumours or having much of his flesh disintegrated by invisible fingers.

Nod'onn's magic most resembled the wild magic that dragons used occasionally and stopping it was exhausting his magical reserves. Which is why he had called a truce. Nod'onn had agreed. The fight seemed to have taken a lot out of him as well.

"Listen to me!" Galbatorix interrupted him. "We will talk of this 'danger' later. It is of no matter. Whatever it is, it will not be able to penetrate the Empire!"

Nod'onn looked around the barren landscape dotted with undead.

"The defences of your Empire are clearly not as powerful as you seem to believe."

Galbatorix ignored him.

"We shall talk it of it later. What you can do is withdraw your curse from this land."

He quickly raised his hand to avoid another outburst.

"There are other places that need your 'protection'," he said slyly.

"Really? What places?"

"My mission is similar to yours, if you would but see it. I too seek to protect my people by spreading my Empire over them to provide law and order to where there was none. But there are those who still refuse it. They are without an Empire to protect them. They are in sore need of the 'protection'."

Nod'onn nodded sagely. "I understand. I too have had experience with those too foolish to understand their greater needs." He grimaced and one of his hands instinctively touched his side, as if feeling a painful wound.

"I ask again. Who are those people?"

"They are many. There is a small kingdom to the south that is in sore need of you. Their only ruler is an addlebrained fool who openly funds terrorists who seek to bring down the order of my Empire. They work with some of the elves and with many of the dwarves an-"

"Dwarves? There are dwarves there too?"

Again Nod'onn clasped his side and his face curled into a mask of pain.

Galbatorix nodded. "Yes."

The obese man raised his head, the pain fleeting.

"I accept your bargain. I have not had a chance to 'protect' a dwarf for a long time. My armies will go down south though your Empire to persuade them. I shall prepare the way."

Nod'onn stepped back, muttered a few unintelligible words and vanished. A few moments later, the blight began to recede into nothingness, leaving living and healthy trees behind it.

Galbatorix grinned as the Spine came to life again, unchanged save for the holes ripped in the sides of the mountains and an army that were even now marching back to their boats on the coastline. Such boats would then head south, straight into Surda and the Varden.

Any observer left would have heard a sound not heard by many. Galbatorix, betrayer of the Riders, Tyrant of the Empire, was laughing.

**End**


End file.
